At Her Latin Lover's Command

Childhood in Portsmouth meant grubby knees, flying pigtails and happiness for Sara Wood. Poverty drove her from typist and seaside landlady to teacher, until writing finally gave her the freedom her Romani blood craved. Happily married, she has two handsome sons: Richard is married, calm, dependable, drives tankers; Simon is a roamer – silversmith, roofer, welder, always with beautiful girls. Sara lives in the Cornish countryside. Her glamorous writing life alternates with her passion for gardening which allows her to be carefree and grubby again!

THE ITALIAN COUNT’S COMMAND

by

Sara Wood

THE FRENCH COUNT’S MISTRESS

by

Susan Stephens

AT THE SPANISH DUKE’S COMMAND

by

Fiona Hood-Stewart

MILLS & BOON

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THE ITALIAN COUNT’S COMMAND

by

Sara Wood

CHAPTER ONE

‘BAD news. You’d better brace yourself.’ Unusually, his brother sounded sympathetic, his tone low and concerned.

Dante’s fingers closed more tightly on his mobile phone. ‘For what?’ he shot, his heart going crazy in case his worst fears were realised.

‘I’m sorry, Dante. I’m afraid that I have proof your wife is playing around.’ Guido paused but Dante was too shocked to speak. ‘I’m at your house now. She’s upstairs. Drunk, out cold—and…well, I have to tell you that she’s not wearing anything. There’s concrete evidence that she’s been entertaining a lover…’

His brother murmured on but Dante heard nothing. He had retreated into a world of stunned horror that slowly and surely turned to a white-hot fury till his Italian blood was boiling with volcanic rage.

It was true, then. All this time he’d been defending his wife of four years to his brother, insisting that she hadn’t married his bank balance and that she did love him despite her cool reserve. It seemed he’d been wrong. Blinded by her beauty and her modesty.

Modesty? He gave a cynical laugh. Maybe even that had been assumed. Miranda’s reserve had disappeared in a spectacular way whenever they’d made love. Fire hit his belly as he grimly acknowledged that he’d never known such pleasure. She was sensational in bed.

He drew in a sharp breath, pain searing through him as he reflected that maybe she’d had a lot of practice in the art of pleasing a man.

‘Where’s Carlo?’ he jerked, praying that his son was safely with the nanny in some English park.

‘Here in the house,’ Guido said, to Dante’s horror. ‘Yelling his head off. I can’t calm him.’

A burning sickness lurched in his stomach and he swore volubly in gutter Italian. Impotent rage began to cloud his judgement and wild, half-formed plans of revenge played havoc with his normally clear and balanced mind. Appalled by what was happening to him, he shook himself free of the red mist that demanded revenge for his wounded manhood and tried to hang on to his sanity.

He could hardly breathe but he managed to growl out, ‘I’m in a taxi not far from my house. I’ll be home in ten minutes or less.’

‘Ten…! What?!’ gasped Guido. ‘B-but…you can’t be! You’re not supposed to be due back at Gatwick for two hours!’

‘I caught an early flight… Santo cielo! What the hell does it matter?’ he roared, losing his cool.

Guido seemed to be panicking about something but Dante had enough to worry about. Overwhelmed by helpless fury, he turned off his mobile and told the cabbie to drive like hell.

She was rocking. Being shaken. It hurt her head to move and she tried to ward her attacker off but her arms wouldn’t do as they were told.

She groaned. Someone had put her entire skull in a pot and brought it to the boil. It was swelling inside, driving her mad. But at least the awful screaming had stopped at last. It had sounded like a child…

‘Miranda! Miranda!’

Rough fingers gripped her arm as the grating tones pierced the chaos of her brain. She must be sick. That was it. Flu.

‘Helllp mmme,’ she mumbled through a thick and lolling tongue.

And found herself being lifted. Frightened, she found she could do nothing because her limbs had become paralysed. With a horrible swoop she was lowered onto the cold, hard tiles of what must be the shower.

‘Open your eyes!’ snarled a furious voice.

She couldn’t. They’d been superglued. Oh, God! What was happening to her? She felt her stomach heave. And was suddenly sick.

Words whirled around her. Bitter, vicious words that she didn’t understand. Her brain just wouldn’t process them.

‘Aaah!’

She choked and spluttered as a fierce spray of ice-cold water jetted straight into her face. It continued mercilessly, punishing her slumped body until she finally managed to open her eyes a fraction.

‘Dante!’ Seeing him, she felt a rush of sheer relief and gave a little sob. Everything would be all right now. His face hovered above hers, her fever making his features look threatening and distorted. Frightened, she clutched at the rim of the shower. ‘Ill,’ she muttered weakly.

‘I wish. You’re drunk, you whore!’ he flung in disgust. And walked out.

Struck dumb by his reaction, she stayed crouched in the shower, incapable of making sense of this nightmare. That was it. A dream. She had a fever and this was an hallucination. If she closed her eyes she might wake up feeling better…

His mouth tightened as he strode off to check out the master bedroom thoroughly. Tangled sheets. Two bottles of champagne, two glasses. Miranda’s clothes scattered haphazardly about the room. He swallowed. On the floor was a pair of men’s briefs. And they weren’t his.

There was the final proof. He felt his hand shaking as he accepted a glass of brandy from Guido.

‘I did try to warn you a long while ago,’ his brother said gently.

‘I know.’

His own voice startled him. It had been nothing more than a whisper. The shock of Miranda’s infidelity had taken away all his strength, all his pride and confidence. Rammed them both down his throat. Sat there laughing at him for being such a fool.

Knocking back the brandy, he returned to his son, who had been yelling his head off when he’d arrived. He’d gone to him first, of course. It had taken him several minutes to calm Carlo down. Finally his son had fallen asleep, utterly exhausted. Not until then had he gone to see what state Miranda was in because she wasn’t important any more. She meant nothing.

He felt murderous that she’d abandoned their child while she partied in the next bedroom with her lover. That, he resolved, would never happen again.

Grimly he packed. Dazed, he accepted Guido’s offer to keep an eye on his wife till she recovered. Full of pain, he caught up his sleeping son in his arms. And got the hell out of Miranda’s life forever.

CHAPTER TWO

‘THAT’S it!’ Miranda announced tightly.

She was trying not to hyperventilate. Despite her shaking fingers, she managed to push the key in the lock of the Knightsbridge house and disable the alarm.

Her rasping breath tore at her lungs and she wondered how long she could hang on to the threads of apparent normality. It seemed her brain was stuck, the same thing going over and over in her mind till she wanted to scream in despair and hopelessness.

Despite all her efforts over the past two weeks she’d failed to trace her son—or her rat of a husband who’d abducted him. Her impulse was to kick something. Howl her eyes out in a darkened room. But she had something vital to do first.

Hauling her case indoors with a violence that betrayed her fractured nerves, she dropped the flight bag from her slim shoulder and strode through the hall to the phone. Her legs felt as if they belonged to someone else. She was amazed they obeyed her at all.

‘No more faffing about. I’m going to call the police!’ she muttered to her sister and snatched up the receiver, her finger poised to stab at the dial.

‘No!’ Lizzie looked appalled, then registered Miranda’s astonished glance and gabbled on incoherently. ‘I mean…well, we don’t want to go public, do we? Think of the damage we’ll do if we accuse Dante of abduction! The Severinis exist on their good name…’

Lizzie rambled on, mystifyingly defending the indefensible. Miranda fumed. ‘What do I care?’ she snapped.

She couldn’t believe her sister’s reluctance to bring the whole Severini family to book. Not one of them had an honourable bone in the whole of their aristocratic, self-serving body.

A silent rage boiled within her as her husband’s handsome, savagely cruel face swam before her eyes. Almost immediately she felt a lurch of misery and realised with helpless despair that this entirely new image of him was causing her untold grief.

Bleakly she stared at the purring phone. She wanted the old Dante Severini back. The adoring, sensual man who’d wooed and married her within a month. Not that calculating monster who’d treated her so callously and had taken her child away. She choked back a sob and realised she was too upset to speak.

Shaking, she replaced the phone in its cradle, intent on keeping up an appearance of self-control. If she let out her true feelings, she knew that she’d probably smash the entire contents of the house in frustration before sinking into a morass of self-pity.

It was sheer will-power alone that held her slender body rigid and erect. She was unbelievably tired but she couldn’t let up, wouldn’t give in to what she saw as weakness. Never had, never would, whatever the challenge.

‘I must call in the authorities. We’ve spent the past fourteen days jetting around, trying to trace Dante’s whereabouts,’ she said coldly. ‘And,’ she added, ‘I’ve had my fill of those Severini lackeys who clam up the moment his name is mentioned.’

‘It’s company policy—’ Lizzie began.

‘I said I was his wife!’ she snapped. ‘Showed them my passport!’

‘They’d had instructions from Dante about an impostor—’

‘How dare he do that to me?’ Miranda fumed. ‘I’ve never been so humiliated in all my life! Being escorted off the premises by security men…!’

Thinking of the terrible wall of silence she’d encountered from Dante’s continental staff in some of the major capitals of Europe, she jerked up her head stubbornly. This was war.

‘I want my son,’ she clipped in a curt understatement. ‘And…’ Her voice faltered before she could rally it. She swallowed. ‘He’ll be wanting me.’

In a quick movement she turned away, ostensibly to make the call, but it was a means of hiding the sudden rush of tears that blurred the steely blue of her agonised gaze.

The word ‘want’ didn’t begin to describe her need—or Carlo’s. It was more visceral than just missing him desperately. It was as if part of her had been ripped away to leave a raw and bleeding wound.

But Carlo would be suffering more deeply. He wouldn’t understand why she wasn’t there any more, why she didn’t tuck him up in bed, cuddle him and play with him…

‘Oh, dear heaven!’ she whispered under her breath.

Thinking about him, and how miserable he must be, she felt as if swords were being plunged into her body over and over again.

But tears weren’t an option. She needed to stay calm and alert. On no account could she afford to surrender to the misery and fear that churned in her stomach, which kept her awake long into the bleak and empty night.

A small, stifled moan escaped her pale lips. No child! No husband! And she’d loved them both with such an all-consuming passion…

At that moment the phone rang, its shrillness startling her so profoundly that she grabbed it and clamped it to her ear, her nerves scattered into pitiful shreds as she answered without thinking, almost spitting out her name.

‘Yes? Miranda here!’

There was a crackling sound and then silence, giving her the opportunity to regain her composure. So she took a deep breath and began again.

‘Miranda Severini. Who’s there?’ she asked, sounding several degrees cooler in tone.

‘Dante.’

Dante! The shock at hearing the caressing murmur was so great that she staggered. In desperation her elegant hand caught at the marble-topped table, the force of the movement breaking a nail. Blindly she stared at its jagged edge, her mind racing.

Contact with him at last! Suddenly her heart thundered with hope but she didn’t give her husband the satisfaction of hearing her plead for her own child. She knew she’d either scream at him hysterically or be choked into silence by her tears.

Pride prevented her from offering him either of those alternatives. With a supreme effort she schooled herself to remain silent, waiting for him to continue while her heart thudded and jerked painfully within her chest.

‘Miranda? Dica! Speak!’

Annoyingly the huskily spoken words seeped into her very veins. He’d always split her name into three lyrical syllables; Mee-rahn-dah. And to her dismay, memories of their love-filled days briefly melted the marrow of her very bones.

Then she clenched her teeth to remind herself of Guido’s revelation. On that fateful day when she’d had that terrible fever, her brother-in-law had poured coffee into her and brought blankets so that she could curl up on the sofa.

She’d known that Dante had gone off with Carlo, but didn’t understand why. Everything had been such a blur. Guido’s sympathy with her plight had caused him to spill the beans.

He’d told her that Dante had married her for the sake of his inheritance. Apparently he had fathered her son purely to curry favour with his childless uncle. The moment Dante’s uncle had died and the inheritance was safely in the bag, he’d spirited Carlo away, too cowardly to face her out.

She frowned, pieces of the jigsaw of that day still missing. It puzzled her that her bed had been in such a mess, though she supposed she must have tossed and turned in her fevered state. But she couldn’t understand what the empty champagne bottles were doing in the rubbish bin, or why two glasses were in the wrong cupboard.

‘Miranda!’

‘Yes? You have something to say to me?’ she prompted, as if Dante were a casual friend who should be apologising for a rude remark, and not the man who’d scattered her trust and love to the four winds.

Love! Her lip quivered. He had become her enemy. A heartless brute who’d told her in an e-mail that she’d seen the last of him and Carlo. And that she wouldn’t get a penny from him—but could support herself by whoring! Whatever had brought that on? He’d also accused her of being drunk. Was he trying to make out a case for divorce?

There was a silence. She could hear his regular breathing. He was deliberately toying with her. He must know how frantic she’d be!

Gritting her teeth, she fought to hold back her fury. In the huge, ornate mirror she unexpectedly caught sight of herself. She stared at the woman who bore no resemblance to how she felt inside.

To all appearances she was an ice-cool ash-blonde, immaculately groomed despite just returning from the tedious trawl to Dante’s offices in France, Spain and Milan, the chignon still smooth, the understated cream suit the epitome of classy designer elegance.

Except that she could see—despite the impeccable make-up—there were tell-tale signs of bruised, tired eyes beneath, and that her pale gold skin no longer glowed or reflected the light but seemed as dead as she felt, deep in her heart.

All her inner turmoil, she vowed, would be kept from Dante. He’d never know how badly he’d hurt her. Play the victim, she’d decided, and she’d become the victim.

Besides, Carlo needed her to be strong. Tough. On the ball. For you, my darling son, she thought, I’d bite my tongue till it bleeds.

‘Dante,’ she said, injecting a faint element of boredom into her voice, ‘I have a call to make. Get on with it.’

His breath hissed in with sharp displeasure. She’d chosen the blunt words deliberately. Dante loathed ugly speech.

‘I do apologise if I am ringing you at an inconvenient time,’ he drawled, heavily lacing his words with sarcasm. ‘I am aware that you don’t give a damn about my son. I also know that looking after him interfered with your own selfish needs. However, I did think you might ask how he is, perhaps out of social politeness…’

She shut out his scathing tones as he continued to berate her in that vein. Of course her only thought was for her child! Her impulse was to yell at the top of her voice, to demand if Carlo was missing her. To plead to be told where Dante had taken their son…

But she held back. Dante would love her to beg and she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Not in a million years.

She’d worked for him as his UK secretary before they’d married four years ago. Even then she’d known that beneath his smooth charm lay a shrewd obstinacy and ruthless drive that ensured he always achieved his goals.

Unbeknown to her, he’d needed a wife urgently to secure a fabulous inheritance—and she’d been there, sitting on a plate, ready to be gobbled up. She blushed to think of her joyous acceptance of his proposal.

With his uncle’s recent death he had acquired the power to buy whatever he wanted—including, should there be a battle, the custody of their child. She trembled, scared of the might ranged against her.

From his penthouse in Milan, Dante’s bachelor uncle had ruled the Severini silk empire. The family silk mills in northern Italy supplied the great fashion houses of the world. She’d never realised that Dante had been poised in the wings to take over the reins. He’d never told her. But then she’d never figured in his future plans, so why should he?

It was a nightmare situation. Her husband would want his son to inherit. That meant she’d effectively lost Carlo—unless she played her trump card: her threat to dishonour the Severinis.

On the flight back to England after her fruitless quest to discover Dante’s whereabouts, she’d decided to publicly expose him for what he was: a ruthless, selfish manipulator who cared nothing for people’s feelings. Whose naked ambition and obsessive pride had caused him to rip a three-year-old from his mother’s loving care.

Oh, God! she thought with a lurch of sickening misery. Carlo would be so bewildered! How dared Dante use her as a brood mare and rip her son away?

Fiercely she tried to shut out the poignant vision of the dark-eyed angel who had illuminated her life. His sweet face with its ready smile had haunted her since his disappearance. It had been the hardest thing in the world not to break down and indulge in an orgy of weeping. And she was at the end of her tether now.

‘Dante,’ she interrupted wearily, breaking in on his vitriolic assassination of her character, ‘is this why you’ve called? To vent your spleen? To kid yourself that I’m to blame for your actions? If so, I am hanging up now—’

‘No!’

She felt a small stab of satisfaction at that hastily rapped ‘no’. He needed something. Hopefully her—to take Carlo back. Maybe he’d decided he could return Carlo to her, and make babies—correction—descendants, with some other woman, now that he’d safely inherited his uncle’s fortune.

She felt sick at that thought. A small part of her still loved Dante. Sighing, she acknowledged that you couldn’t switch off a grand passion like a light.

But at least her gamble—of appearing to be indifferent to his cruelty—had paid off. He’d been thrown off balance. Her reaction to his call had not been what he’d expected. That was how you handled bullies. It disconcerted them.

Trying not to raise her hopes, she pressed a hand hard against her thudding heart, crushing the rich silk jacket beneath her long fingers. And, keeping her breathing as light as possible, she enquired merely,

‘Well?’

‘Che Dio mi aiuti! You are a cold, unfeeling monster of a woman!’ he spat.

Miranda almost sobbed out loud. He had turned her into an ice queen. It had been her only defence against his growing indifference over the past year.

She managed to hold herself together. ‘I assume you’ll get to the point eventually.’

Mentally urging him on with an almost hysterical panic, she sank to her knees, which seemed dangerously liquid. She saw Lizzie staring at her, a frozen expression on her face, and was touched that her sister felt so agitated on her behalf.

Dante cleared his throat. ‘You must come to Italy. It is imperative that you do.’ It sounded as if a herd of wild elephants were dragging the words from him. His normally satiny voice was harsh and begrudging. ‘I’ve sent a ticket by courier. The flight is tomorrow. My chauffeur will meet you. I’m at my late uncle’s estate.’

Oh, thank you, thank you! she cried in silent passion. He’d relented! No, she corrected. That seemed unlikely. He’d rather cut off his right hand.

More probably, she thought rapidly, he’d discovered that looking after Carlo in strange surroundings was harder than he’d imagined. Heavens, she thought with a rare flash of waspishness, he must have been desperate to swallow his pride!

But Carlo would be hers. The separation was to end. Her hand flew to her mouth to stop herself from groaning with heartfelt relief. She’d have him back, safe in her arms. Tomorrow!

All of a sudden, she couldn’t contain herself any longer. And without even responding to her husband’s imperious demand, she put the phone down with a crash.

Then burst into floods of tears. And, embarrassed, she ran up to her room to give vent to her relief in private.

Lizzie gaped. She’d never seen her sister cry. Not even seven years ago, on the day their mother had died when she was twelve and Miranda eighteen. And since their father had left them all before their mother’s death, Miranda had then become the breadwinner and substitute mother.

Dante had been the first person to get under Miranda’s skin, the first man to make her blossom and go starry-eyed. But then he was gorgeous, even Lizzie had to admit, more charismatic than his handsome younger brother, Guido, who managed the London office.

Guiltily Lizzie chewed her lip. She dreaded what Miranda might say if she ever found out she was dating the wild and reckless Guido. But she had a life too, didn’t she? The Severini family was rich and she wanted in. It was scary now that Miranda had been cast aside with no income and the prospect of homelessness.

With a shudder, Lizzie remembered the penny-pinching days of her childhood. Since Miranda’s marriage, she’d become used to living in the lovely house here in Knightsbridge, and charging all her shopping to Dante’s account.

So with Miranda possibly blowing the chance she’d had to be one of the idle rich, she, Lizzie, had to take over the running now. If Dante didn’t take her sister back, Lizzie thought, she’d bag herself a Severini of her own to provide the luxury lifestyle she craved.

‘Look at it! Miranda, just clock this place!’ Lizzie screeched.

Miranda was beginning to regret agreeing to her sister’s plea to be found a place on the flight too. For the whole journey, Lizzie had been pestering her to reconcile with Dante. In addition, Lizzie’s envy of the sumptuous villa on the shores of Lake Como had made Miranda squirm.